


have you stopped to notice

by themorninglark



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, oh my god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 11:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20470463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: Last year, Hanamaki had said to Oikawa that he wanted to move in with Kunimi because he’d rather have a quiet housemate, and what you saw with Kunimi was exactly what you got. Every word of that was true. What he had not said, what he had not thought worth saying, was that the day he dropped by to take a look at Kunimi’s place, the unbearable summer had paused at the windowsill and settled with a sigh around the cloud-coloured curtains, a sigh like a tired sun that had found a place to stay awhile.Kunimi hadn’t said much to him, then. Just,here, the bed folds out like this, and Hanamaki had looked at the sofa bed and the light peeking in on the windowsill and thought, he, too, could stay a while.In which Kunimi’s kotatsu breaks, and Hanamaki tries to help him fix it.





	have you stopped to notice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [charcoalsuns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcoalsuns/gifts).

> This is for Cam, my lovely winning bidder in the [Fandom for Siken](https://fandomforsiken.tumblr.com/post/185467043596/about) auction! Thank you Cam for your generosity and your friendship always, and for giving me a chance to write the most self-indulgent Oh My God They Were Roommates for a rarepair we’re both so fond of. I hope you like it ♥
> 
> Thank you also to May, Ewa and Meg for organising this auction in support of a writer whose work has so profoundly shaped my own!
> 
> [Title and epigraph](https://youtu.be/adtInXVMir0)

_I can show you places where your mind just goes_  
_Come wade the river, it always flows  
_ _It always flows_

It all started when the kotatsu broke. _Broke_ broke, not the kind of broke that could be coaxed into unbreaking with a well-placed kick. Not that Hanamaki knew much about things like that. It was always Kunimi who did the kicking. The one time Hanamaki had tried, Kunimi had sighed and said _Hanamaki-san_, and Hanamaki had come away from that encounter with a light bruise on his foot and the memory of his name, an intricate knot in Kunimi’s voice. _Hanamaki-san_. Like a shoelace coming undone, he had let it unspool and never got round to tying it neatly.

Now the kotatsu was broken, and even Kunimi had given up on it. It took Kunimi a long time to give up on things.

“It’s because you use it every day,” said Hanamaki from the couch, where he was comfortably ensconced in a pile of pillows and blankets. “I keep telling you not to fall asleep in there.”

“It’s warm in there,” Kunimi mumbled. He was still crouched next to the kotatsu, peering under the surface at the wiring, as if it were a matter of patience. As if the kotatsu might decide to sputter back to life if Kunimi waited next to it long enough. Hanamaki had no doubt Kunimi could outwait almost anything, but even he might have met his match this time.

Finally, Kunimi sat back on the floor, brow furrowed, and looked up at Hanamaki. He was still in his pajamas, even though he’d woken up hours ago. They had eaten lunch, pasta with curry sauce from a packet that Hanamaki had scavenged up and thrown together while Kunimi slept, and Kunimi had eaten that lunch in his pajamas and settled into the kotatsu only to find it wasn’t working. Outside, the sky was beginning to darken.

“It’s cold, huh,” Hanamaki remarked.

Kunimi frowned. He stood up at last, and went over to Hanamaki. “Please move.”

Hanamaki glanced up. “This couch is too small, isn’t it? You can sleep on the sofa bed.”

“You took all your blankets here with you,” said Kunimi.

Hanamaki moved.

When they had been teammates, there were moments Hanamaki would glance over to the sidelines and Kunimi would be awake, clearly awake with his gaze alert as he sat leaning against the wall. There were moments he knew Kunimi was watching the game, and then the next, Hanamaki would look again and his eyes would be closed and he would have nodded off without anyone noticing. Everyone knew it was devilishly hard to catch Kunimi in the in-between moments when he fell asleep. Even Kindaichi hadn’t been able to do it.

That had been then. Now, Kunimi was curling himself up under Hanamaki’s blanket as best as he could, head half-pillowed on Hanamaki’s lap because that was the only way they would both fit on the couch. Hanamaki shifted his laptop sideways slightly onto his other leg to make space, popped his headphones back on, and let Kunimi nap.

At half past six, he nudged him. “You’ll be late for work.”

Kunimi’s breathing deepened.

“Oi. Wake up.”

“Nobody needs to watch the weather report,” Kunimi mumbled, into the blanket folds. “They can just open their windows.”

Hanamaki rapped him lightly on the forehead with his knuckles. “It’s January. Nobody wants to open their windows.”

Kunimi yawned. He sat up with a soft groan, blinked balefully at Hanamaki, and went to his room. Hanamaki could hear the water running.

He looked down at the kotatsu, sitting placid at his feet, and stretched a leg out to prod it with his big toe. It had not miraculously fixed itself in the past half hour. There was a small singe mark on one side of the fabric and several mug-shaped water rings worn into the table top. Since last autumn, Hanamaki had never seen Kunimi spend a day outside of the kotatsu. The living room didn’t seem quite complete without that image. Strange, how quickly one got used to things.

* * *

Oikawa would have said, it all started when Hanamaki decided to move in with Kunimi. If he’d chosen Oikawa’s place, there wouldn’t have been any broken kotatsus that needed fixing, because Oikawa didn’t believe in kotatsus. He believed in modern apartments with proper central heating that didn’t make rattly noises when you slept.

“I don’t think it’s that Kunimi doesn’t believe in those things,” Hanamaki said as he walked down the stairs of the apartment building, half the kotatsu balanced in his arms. “I think he just doesn’t think about them.”

Oikawa let out a snort. “Kunimi-chan? Not thinking? _Please!_”

“Kunimi thinks selectively,” said Hanamaki. “Okay, stop, stop, we’re here. Just kick the front door open with your heel. It’s not locked.”

“I can’t believe I’m spending my one day in Sendai helping you carry a kotatsu to the electronics store,” Oikawa grumbled. He kicked the door open anyway, heaved the kotatsu’s weight so it rested mostly on him, and made his way out.

“Don’t be a drama queen. You’re not carrying it to the store. Just to the car.”

Together, they heaved the kotatsu into the open boot of Hanamaki’s second-hand baby pink Honda. It had belonged to his cousin, and his aunt before that, and Hanamaki had never got round to doing anything about the decor when he bought it over. There was still a Hello Kitty decal on the front window and a heart-shaped ornament dangling from the mirror. It used to jangle, but Kunimi had personally removed the tiny bell from it the first time he rode in the car. _It drives me mad_, he’d said, and Hanamaki had laughed and let him bury the bell deep in the glove compartment along with some lint balls and old spearmint gum.

Oikawa piled into the passenger seat, cranked the seat back and put his feet up. “It’s not even your kotatsu. Why does Kunimi-chan get to sleep while we do all the work here?”

“He got home from work at six AM.”

“I got in on the train at eight AM,” Oikawa grumbled.

Hanamaki started up the car. “I’ll buy you lunch later if you stop complaining.”

“You’d buy me lunch later even if I kept complaining,” said Oikawa. Hanamaki didn’t dignify this with a response, and Oikawa, with a grin Hanamaki pretended not to see, stopped complaining.

Last year, Hanamaki had said to Oikawa that he wanted to move in with Kunimi because he’d rather have a quiet housemate, and what you saw with Kunimi was exactly what you got. Every word of that was true. What he had not said, what he had not thought worth saying, was that the day he dropped by to take a look at Kunimi’s place, the unbearable summer had paused at the windowsill and settled with a sigh around the cloud-coloured curtains, a sigh like a tired sun that had found a place to stay awhile.

Kunimi hadn’t said much to him, then. Just, _here, the bed folds out like this_, and Hanamaki had looked at the sofa bed and the light peeking in on the windowsill and thought, he, too, could stay a while.

Hanamaki deposited the kotatsu at the electronics store down the road, and left them his phone number before going for lunch with Oikawa. They went to a cafe near the TV tower that Kunimi liked, because the coffee was overwhelmingly sweet and milky and came with a little pot of sugar syrup.

“How is living with Kunimi-chan, anyway? Broken kotatsus aside.”

“Easy,” said Hanamaki. “I keep the toilet paper stocked up. He keeps the milk stocked up. We know what we’re doing.”

Oikawa raised his eyebrows. He reached for the coffee in Hanamaki’s hand, took a sip, made a face as he pretended to choke and slid it back across the table. Hanamaki tipped more sugar into it.

“Easy, huh,” Oikawa remarked, and took a big bite from his egg sandwich.

“Jealous?”

“As _if_!”

Hanamaki smirked, waved the waiter over and ordered a takeaway ham and cheese sandwich for Kunimi, along with an extra large cup of coffee. Just then, his phone rang.

“Hanamaki-san? This is Yazawa, from the store…”

“Well?” asked Oikawa, when Hanamaki hung up.

Hanamaki shook his head. “The model is too old. They say it’ll cost more to fix it than to just get a new one.”

“So let’s go get a new one. We should have done that from the start!”

Hanamaki scratched his head and stared over at the TV tower, a silver-grey spire with the time illuminated in faint blue LED lights against the sky. As if Kunimi might give him a sign. Of course Kunimi wasn’t going to give him a sign. He wasn’t even there right now. Hanamaki had left him passed out on the sofa bed at home and could only hope that the smell of coffee would be enough to wake him up in time for work.

“You think Iwaizumi would do me a favour? He’s pretty handy with electronics.”

Oikawa licked his fingers clean of breadcrumbs. “Do you even have to ask? But honestly, the _lengths_ you’re going to, Makki.”

Hanamaki shrugged. “It’s not like I have anything better to do, right?”

* * *

When he had first moved in, Hanamaki, who had not turned on the TV in years, had been surprised to hear from Kunimi that he worked at the TV station.

“You don’t seem to be the sort of person to go into TV,” he’d remarked.

“I’m not _on_ TV. It’s not like I’m reading the news,” said Kunimi. “Here, this is what I do.”

He was sitting at that kotatsu, working on his laptop. It was still summer, and the kotatsu wasn’t switched on, and it was sweltering outside but inside Kunimi’s apartment, there was a pleasant enough wind curling in through the open windows. Kunimi himself, in an oversized faded white T-shirt, might not have looked out of place on the beach, although something about him made Hanamaki want to slap one of those great big floppy straw hats on his head.

Hanamaki leaned over. He watched Kunimi drag a tiny icon of a sun over a map of Japan, towards Hokkaido. Kunimi zoomed in on his trackpad and dropped the sun next to the caption that said _Biei_.

“You… make the weather report?”

“Someone else writes up the report for Harada-san every night. I make the graphics,” said Kunimi.

It seemed like an awfully specific profession. It had never even occurred to Hanamaki that there were people whose jobs were to make the weather report graphics. “Who’s Harada-san?”

“The lady who reads the weather report. You don’t watch TV, do you?”

“Sorry. Netflix, you know.”

“Don’t be sorry. I don’t really care if anyone sees the weather report. It’s a good job for me, anyway.”

Hanamaki propped his head onto Kunimi’s shoulder with an exaggerated sigh. “What makes a _good job_, Kunimi?”

Kunimi let him stay, slumped where he was, and continued tinkering with his map of Japan. “Is this a facetious or existential question, Hanamaki-san?”

“I don’t know. Is there a difference?”

Kunimi smiled. “Well, I guess a good job for me is one that lets me go in for night shifts so I can sleep in the day.”

“Hmm. I don’t know if that’d work for me,” Hanamaki mused.

“Also,” Kunimi added, “the weather doesn’t argue with me. It’s much better than dealing with people. The work only gets annoying when there’s a typhoon or something… I have to make so many animations.”

“Must be inconvenient,” Hanamaki murmured.

That day, Hanamaki came home from lunch with Oikawa to find Kunimi awake. He was still curled up on the sofa bed under Hanamaki’s blankets, glasses on, squinting at his laptop. He looked up as Hanamaki opened the door and slipped his shoes off. “_Okaeri._ What’s the prognosis?”

Hanamaki shook his head. “Electronics store said no. I thought I’d ask Iwaizumi if he’ll have a look... got you something, by the way.”

He went over and dropped the brown paper bag of sandwiches into Kunimi’s lap, and set the oversweetened coffee on the side table.

“Ah, thanks Hanamaki-san, you’re a lifesaver,” said Kunimi, leaning over to grab the cup. He lifted the plastic lid, inhaled deeply and sighed. The sight of the hot steam fogging up his glasses made Hanamaki smile.

Kunimi didn’t look like he was about to budge from under the blankets, and Hanamaki didn’t ask. He set down his bag and went to take a shower. When he emerged, Kunimi was nibbling the crusts off one sandwich, crumbs on the corners of his lips.

“Is it a cold front or something lately?” Hanamaki asked, going to the kitchen to put on the kettle. “It’s been freezing.”

“You’d know if you watched the weather report.”

Hanamaki let out a loud, pointed yawn, and Kunimi made a small noise that could have been a laugh. He didn’t look up from his laptop as he said, “Let’s go somewhere warm, then.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hmm? You didn’t hear me?”

“I did. I just thought, for a moment, I actually heard you volunteering to go somewhere. Voluntarily.”

Kunimi did glance over, then, his gaze open and languid, and Hanamaki looked out the window, wondered where in the city they might find warmth in a season like this. When the kotatsu had been working, there were times it felt to him like all the warmth was balled up in the living room of this apartment, a heartbeat like a hearth in a gently clenched fist. Now, without it, they’d have to make their own.

* * *

The perks of working a night job, Kunimi had said, included sleeping in the daytime; but there were daytimes when Kunimi roused himself before lunch and they got into Hanamaki’s little pink car and let him drive them somewhere, somewhere they took turns picking. The laundromat, where they sat with a box of doughnuts and made up stories about people who came in. The family restaurant near Seijou, where they used to go get parfait and soda after practice. The sporting goods warehouse, when Hanamaki needed new sneakers.

Today, they found themselves in the grocery store, and Kunimi deigned to put in the effort to push the cart.

“It’s because you always go too fast,” he said, when Hanamaki opened his mouth to remark on it.

Hanamaki quickened his pace down the ice cream aisle and turned to smirk over his shoulder at Kunimi.

“If you don’t hurry, I’m going to choose the ice cream of the week,” he called.

Kunimi let out a sigh that Hanamaki could hear in his mind, even if he couldn’t actually hear it, and wheeled the cart over. In the end, they got salted caramel and mint chocolate chip, like they always did, and they got Fuji apples and a handful of leeks and cotton-breeze-scented laundry detergent, whatever a cotton breeze smelled like.

They took their time, because Kunimi was yawning and Hanamaki was warm, and he was in no hurry to leave the centrally heated store. They didn’t actually need groceries. Still, it suited Hanamaki fine to make their way slowly down the aisles and look at the beef together, to quibble with Kunimi about whether it was worth the cost of buying a home grill so they could have yakiniku.

“The smell would just stay in the living room,” Kunimi pointed out. “And then you’d have to sleep with the smell of yakiniku all over your sheets and your pajamas.”

“I don’t see the problem with that,” said Hanamaki.

“Hanamaki-san,” Kunimi murmured.

They moved on. Three rows down, Kunimi pointed out that profiteroles were on some kind of post-Valentine’s Day sale. Hanamaki put two packets into the cart and declared the outing, on the whole, a success.

* * *

“Give it up,” said Iwaizumi.

Hanamaki turned on the TV. Kunimi was right. He didn’t need to watch the weather report. He knew what it was like out there, and so did Iwaizumi, who paid no attention to the forecast. It was nice to have the noise in the background anyway.

“Why?” Hanamaki asked.

Iwaizumi stood up. “This model is too old. I don’t think the manufacturer would repair it even if you sent it back. Why don’t you just get a new one?”

Hanamaki went over and gave the kotatsu a fond, hopeful kick. Much to his disappointment, nothing happened.

“If you kept doing that, no wonder it broke,” said Iwaizumi.

“I kicked it _once_. Kunimi kicks it all the time. Gently.”

Iwaizumi shot Hanamaki a look, one eyebrow raised. “Well, it can’t be fixed. Sorry about that.”

Hanamaki shook his head, got up and went over to the kitchen to pour Iwaizumi a glass of water. “Kunimi will be desolate. Guess I’ll just have to learn circuitry myself. It’s not like I’m doing anything else.”

“Yeah, okay. Good luck with that. How’s your job hunt, anyway?”

From Oikawa, Hanamaki had danced around this question in every way he knew how, and he had found it both annoying to answer and amusing to refuse to give him a straight answer. From Iwaizumi, it was neither as annoying nor amusing. Hanamaki went to stand next to him where he was leaning by the counter, crossed his arms and smiled. “Oikawa’s paying me to help him with his tax returns. Otherwise, unremarkable. In fact, nonexistent.”

He looked up, stared at the ceiling. He had spent so much aimless time these past months lying on that sofa bed, arms pillowed behind his head, counting the light fixtures in that white plaster ceiling like stars in the sky till he knew the shape of all of them.

“You know, it’s not like anything really happened at work,” Hanamaki went on. “I wasn’t fired. There wasn’t a restructuring. I just… sat at my desk one day and thought, I don’t want to sit in a cubicle for the rest of my life and do accounting for a logistics company. I really don’t. Is that weird?”

Iwaizumi set the empty glass down.

“I grew up with Oikawa,” he said. “I have a pretty high threshold for weird. You’re asking the wrong person. Ask Kunimi.”

Hanamaki laughed. “When I told him, he just sort of shrugged and said _okay_, like it wasn’t a big deal at all. Then he went back to making tiny rainclouds.”

“I don’t think Kunimi’s the sort of person to say things he doesn’t mean,” said Iwaizumi.

Hanamaki nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so too.”

* * *

If Hanamaki really thought about it, perhaps it all started when he quit his job. Perhaps it had all started right then, when he walked out of his office building with a cardboard box in his hands and wondered, _what next?_

“Why are you here, Hanamaki-san?”

Hanamaki, startled, looked up. There was a voice he never would have expected to hear again, at least not in the flesh. On TV, maybe, once or twice. Kageyama’s voice had—if not quite deepened, mellowed, from what Hanamaki remembered. He had grown a little since high school, but in the way of the TV making everything look bigger, Kageyama Tobio looked smaller in real life.

“Shouldn’t that be my line?” Hanamaki said. He leaned back sideways on the couch, stretched his legs out so his ankles dangled over the armrest, and studied Kageyama with undisguised curiosity.

“Kunimi said he had something for me to pick up.” The spare keys, the set with the polar bear keychain that Kunimi kept under the potted begonia outside, dangled from Kageyama’s finger. He set them down on the side table next to the door, looked at Hanamaki and continued. “But his work hours are inconvenient. So I told him I’d come get it myself. I didn’t know you would be here. Sorry for intruding.”

Hanamaki raised his eyebrows. Kageyama was still hovering on the threshold, his shoes off. Hanamaki waved him in. “Come in, come in. It’s not like this is my place. I’m just sharing, for a bit.”

Kageyama nodded, mumbled his thanks and and went to the kitchen. Hanamaki, watching him go from behind his magazine, hid a smile. So that was why Kunimi had come back from his Hokkaido work trip with a carton of milk boxes. Hanamaki had not known Kageyama and Kunimi were such good friends. Hanamaki had not known much about Kageyama at all, but he’d thought he knew enough about Kunimi, at least, to understand that particular relationship. Still, many years had passed. Perhaps it was not so strange that time would change even someone like Kunimi, who seemed to let so much wash over him.

“It’s cold in here,” Kageyama remarked. He glanced at the kotatsu, currently sitting near the doorway.

Hanamaki followed his gaze. “Yeah. That broke.”

“Oh. Kunimi’s had it a long time. I suppose it was time.”

“Has he had it a long time?”

Kageyama stepped out of the kitchen, the carton balanced in his arms, and made his way back to the front door. “Since before he moved in here. Since university, I think. He got it for his room there. Every time I saw him, he was under it, studying.”

“I didn’t know,” Hanamaki murmured. “Here, let me help you with that.”

He got up and met Kageyama halfway to take the carton of milk boxes from his arms. Kageyama nodded his thanks as he bent down to put his shoes back on.

“Are you staying with Kunimi for a while?” Kageyama asked.

_Yes,_ Hanamaki wanted to say. _Maybe. I don’t know._

He shrugged. “He’s just letting me crash while I’m unemployed. I had to move out of my old place. Couldn’t afford the rent.”

Kageyama nodded, like it didn’t surprise him. Like it didn’t surprise him at all that Kunimi had become someone who let people in. He straightened, and Hanamaki handed the carton back to him.

“Don’t suppose you can fix a kotatsu?” he asked. “Iwaizumi’s tried, and failed.”

Kageyama frowned. “I don’t think I can fix something that Iwaizumi-san couldn’t.”

“Figures. Well, keep warm on your way home.”

Kageyama nodded. As he let himself out, the door shut with a soft whisper. The breeze from the corridor drifted in through the little gap under the door and tickled Hanamaki’s toes. He sat back down on the couch, tucked his feet in close, and turned on the TV.

* * *

“We should go get a new kotatsu,” said Hanamaki.

Kunimi, an indistinguishable lump under the blankets next to Hanamaki, barely moved. “Why?”

Hanamaki nudged him with his knee. “Even Iwaizumi’s given up on your old one.”

“I don’t need one,” said Kunimi. He yawned, and stuck his head out. “It’s warm enough here.”

“Ha. Very cute. I’m a kotatsu substitute now, am I?”

Kunimi looked at him as if that question didn’t dignify an answer. He sat up and stretched his arms overhead. “Let’s watch something. I can’t sleep.”

It was a Saturday night. Hanamaki, unemployed, had learned to tell the days of the week by Kunimi’s presence in the house; weekends were when he was around in the evenings, and invariably could not sleep once the sun went down.

“You choose,” said Hanamaki, and got up to go to the kitchen.

He knew, and was unsurprised to find when he came back with the last of the post-Valentine’s Day profiteroles, that Kunimi had flicked to the D-list horror movie cable channel. It was what Hanamaki had found him watching when he first came round to see the place, and it was what they had watched the night he moved in. It worked well enough for Hanamaki, and, it seemed, for Kunimi too; Kunimi’s running commentary on the stupidity of doomed main characters made Hanamaki laugh, and it amused him to try and guess when the jump scares were going to happen.

As the heroine made a brave foray into the deserted cabin in the woods, the music escalating, Hanamaki reached for the last profiterole at the same time Kunimi did. Their knuckles bumped. Kunimi, sprawled on the sofa bed with his head propped on a pile of pillows, looked up to shoot Hanamaki a plaintive stare.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“Arm-wrestle you for it,” Hanamaki said. He was half-joking, but Kunimi set his mouth in a determined line and shifted to stick his arm out, elbow resting on the mattress below him. Hanamaki, after a pause, took his hand.

The battle was short, quick, dirty, and unexpected. Hanamaki had to roll over to keep from being forced off the bed by Kunimi.

“I win,” said Kunimi.

Hanamaki, staring at the ceiling, raised his fist and shook it out. “Bloody hell. Where did _that_ come from? I never even saw you take part in arm-wrestling back in Seijou. Not _once_!”

“I save my strength for important things.”

“Like the last profiterole.”

“Like the last profiterole.”

Lying back on rough borrowed sheets, in the flickering light of the TV and winter’s last breath, Hanamaki’s laugh came fast and breathless. He looked over at Kunimi, who had crumbs and a chocolate stain on his mouth.

“Who _are_ you? I think I’d like to get to know you.”

Something that could almost be a smile crossed Kunimi’s lips. “I’m the same person I’ve always been, Hanamaki-san. I’m right here.”

* * *

Matsukawa, on the phone from miles away, had not asked Hanamaki why he quit his job. He had simply made a soft _mmm_ noise and said, he hoped Hanamaki’s parents wouldn’t be mad at him, and if he needed to escape Sendai for a while, he was welcome to crash in Kyoto.

Hanamaki’s parents had not been mad at him. They seemed more perplexed than anything else, and if he were being entirely honest with himself, Hanamaki felt just as perplexed some days.

Oikawa had asked all sorts of questions, of course, when Hanamaki asked if he had a spare room. The gentle irony of it all was, it had been Oikawa who told him, _Kunimi-chan’s got room in his apartment too, you know._ How Oikawa had known this, Hanamaki didn’t ask. It seemed trivial, the details of who and why and how Oikawa had kept in touch with people through the years. That was just who Oikawa was.

Kunimi had not asked him anything at all, until Hanamaki told him. _Okay, Hanamaki-san_, he had said, with a light shrug. _Stay as long as you like. I don’t mind._ So Hanamaki had, because Kunimi made it easy, and it was easy all these long afternoons, watching little clouds appear on the TV and thinking of Kunimi, watching the sun peek out from behind them as warmer weather moved north towards Miyagi.

* * *

Along with spring came scattered showers, and March’s first rainfall swept across Sendai at an hour between dusk and day. Hanamaki stepped out with a large umbrella he had got from Disneyland. It was black and red and had Mickey Mouse ears on top. He stopped at the vending machine, and took a walk down several streets, till the light of the TV tower came in sight just past a park.

When he got there, Kunimi was just coming out of the doorway, his white muffler wrapped around his neck. For the first time, Hanamaki noticed how much he had grown, from so many years ago when they’d first met in a gym that seemed awfully far away now. They were already of a height, then. Now, Kunimi was just a smidge taller. It was hard to tell, because of the way he slouched.

He thought of reaching out, taking Kunimi’s gloved hands in his own. He thought about the hot canned coffee in his pocket, warming his body. He thought about how he had walked all this way, and he could have driven, and Kunimi could have slept in the front seat on their way home, and what a fool he was.

Kunimi stood where he was, under the shelter of the front step, and watched Hanamaki approach. The air was a gentle susurration that ruffled his fringe across his forehead. Hanamaki reached out, brushed a strand of hair out of Kunimi’s eyes. His face was warm to the touch.

Kunimi looked down at his watch. “Do you know what time it is, Hanamaki-san?”

“It’s raining,” said Hanamaki.

Kunimi raised his eyebrows. Hanamaki stuck his hand in his pocket, pulled out the can of hot coffee and handed it to him.

“Also, I’ve decided your kotatsu is a total write-off. Sorry about that. I tried.”

“Did you come all the way out here to pick me up so you could tell me that? At five in the morning? You could have waited till I got home.”

Hanamaki shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep.”

It was true, and it wasn’t. He could have slept, he supposed, if he’d really wanted to. He hadn’t wanted to. Kunimi seemed to have taken all the warmth in the sofa bed away with him when he left in the evening.

Kunimi fell into step with him as they walked back. Hanamaki raised the umbrella, just a little bit. Kunimi really was taller than him now.

“But if you can live with a substitute kotatsu that doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life just yet, I think you’ll be fine,” he said.

“The life of a kotatsu isn’t so complicated,” Kunimi murmured.

Hanamaki smiled. “Yeah. There could be worse things in life to be, huh.”

Kunimi cracked the can of coffee open and took a long sip. “Take your time. I really meant it, you know, Hanamaki-san. When I said you can stay as long as you like. I don’t mind.”

“I figured. Thanks,” said Hanamaki.

He let out a breath, long and slow. _Easy,_ he had said to Oikawa. In that moment, it seemed the easiest thing in the world, to walk home with Kunimi by his side, and to wonder what would be on sale at the grocery store tomorrow, and to think about how warm it would be under the blankets when they got home. Years later, Hanamaki would look back at this moment and think, _now, it all started right now_, but when he thought back to all the endings and beginnings that had led him here, he could not begin to untangle one from another. That wasn’t a bad thing. It just meant that he never knew when something new might start.

Kunimi slid closer as the wind rose, rain softly falling like cherry blossoms. All pink in the sweet dawn light, pooling around Hanamaki’s sneakers and the tips of his ears.


End file.
